The Warning
by Aurette
Summary: Severus has an urgent message to get to his... readers.


Severus stared at the email in a snit. _How dare they? Something must be done! But what? _He narrowed his eyes._ Hang on... I have an idea..._

He sat back and folded his arms over his chest, sneering at Hermione's computer with disdain. His had died. Again. He'd already replaced it once, with a magnificent beast that took up half his desk, only to have that idiot contraption shit itself. After that, he'd gone back to the wobbly machine he'd given up for dead. Eventually, that one had finally died as well.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. He had another one on order, but it would be weeks before it arrived. He was stuck with Hermione's persnickity machine for the interim. She was as stubborn and hardheaded with her gadgets as she was in the lab. And cheap as well. "Why buy MS Word?" she had said repeatedly. "Open Office is free."

"Yes, but Open Office sucks donkey balls," he would reply. "The proper tool for the proper job, woman. Have you learned nothing? I'm a writer. I need something better than 'this'll do.'"

"Severus, it's only fanfiction."

At that point in the conversation, he would scowl at her, and she would throw her hands up and back away.

In order for his idea to work, he would need to write a very quick, very short story. The people must be told. _You're probably overreacting_, he said to himself. _These things have happened before in the past and were almost always found to be much ado about nothing._ He shook his head. _Better safe than sorry_. _I owe it to my friends_.

With a deep sigh, he clicked on the Open Office icon with all the enthusiasm he would have shown if he'd been forced into washing Filch's knickers.

He looked again at the email one of his beloved readers had sent. An urgent message saying that the moderators at his chosen forum were on a rampage and were pulling down any and all stories that contained questionable content. The M rating now applied to swear words, anything more risque was being snatched off. If they found his stuff, it would be gone like Bellatrix's virginity in fifth-year. He had to warn his readers. Tell them that they needed to download and save any of his stories that they liked, because there was the possibility that they would disappear. Permanently. Censored into oblivion for being offensive/obscene.

It was already happening to other authors.

If they liked his work, they needed to save it. Perhaps share it with others that couldn't save it themselves. He smirked, liking the idea of there being a hidden underground of readers. Like-minded individuals forming a resistance group, passing smut in secret as if they were plans for world domination.

He shook his head, unhappy with that metaphor. World domination was over-rated. He briefly flailed for another, better, choice of words, but felt his creativity stifled by the cold, spare design of this damnable Open Office. And Hermione's desk. It was the wrong height. His long fingers tripped over each other trying to manage her tiny little keyboard. At least he'd taken the precaution of dragging his own desk chair across the dungeon. The first time he'd sneaked onto her machine, he'd needed a chiropractor afterward. He smirked again, remembering how he'd managed to elude several household chores due to his 'infirmity.'

He glanced at the clock and scowled. There wasn't much time left. She would be home soon, and he would have to have everything set back to rights before then. Oh, she knew he was borrowing her computer to check his email, but she didn't know how he threw his legs up on her desk and slowly covered it with potato crisp crumbs and chocolate wrappers while spending hours looking at amusing pictures of cats. It wouldn't do for him to complain endlessly about her set up and then get caught spending half the day on it.

She might get the idea that he didn't need one of his own... He looked at the long list of review replies and private messages he had yet to reply to and shuddered. He needed his own, dammit. One with a decent keyboard...

...and_ Word_.

He narrowed his eyes at the screen. Time to write his little story. It wouldn't be pretty, nor particularly witty, but it was the only way he could warn them. Hopefully, they would spread the word.

He hunched his shoulders and leaned forward, typing, "Severus stared at teh enail in a sbit..."

"Oh, for fuck's sake," he growled.

* * *

*sneaks awesome Aurette-chair back across dungeon*


End file.
